Study On Translation Of Paralanguage In Chinese Versions Of Main-Travelled Roads

As the product of social and economic reform,local literature is popular in late 1860 s and is the main form of American realism literature.Through the description of certain region or social class with their true stories,the authors of the local literature have explored the new literary field which has not been covered by the previous literature,and such practice brings a profound impact on American realism literature.Main-Travelled Roads,written by Hamlin Garland,is one of the representatives in American local literature.From the early 1960 s,this book has been started to be introduced into China.Although there are a few researches on Main-Travelled Roads since its publication,it cannot be ignored because of its literary value.In order to enhance the truthfulness of creation,the author relies on massive paralanguage to obtain various characterizations,which moves readers deeply.Paralanguage,as another way of human communication,plays a vital role in shaping figures,conveying emotional states and mentality and disclosing the theme of the work.The definition and classification of paralanguage have been under discussion,but it can acknowledgedly be analyzed from narrow sense and broad sense.The paralanguage in a narrow sense(also called paralanguage features)mainly refers to the mood,tone,stress,laughter,crying,which can show the speaker’s attitude,social status and other relevant information;the paralanguage in a broad sense includes not only paralanguage features,but body movements,clothes,furniture,and settings.These components of paralanguage make a great difference in communication,such as providing additional meaning,replacing the meaning,emphasizing the meaning and negating the meaning.The author,in literary works,often employs these paralanguage to depict the figures’ characteristics and emotion,and reveal the theme of the works.In order to perceive the novel as much as possible,this thesis chooses to do researches in a broad sense.Namely,the major concentrations are the translation of mood,body language,and situational conditions in paralanguage.This thesis selects the translated versions by Li Wenjun as the basis and Zou Wenhua’s version as an assistant one,attempting to describe and study the translation of the paralanguage in Main-Travelled Roads.By analyzing,it is found that the Chinese mood system is much more abundant than English mood system and translators try to take Chinese readers into account and choose strategy of domesticating translation to successfully reproduce the mood and emotion in target language.In the analysis of body language and situational conditions,translators have employed all sorts of translated techniques such as literal translation,supplement,transformation and annotation in the wording or the sentence structure,revealing the implied contextual meanings in front of readers.In general,the translation of paralanguage is not only a simple transformational process,because it features the national and cultural characteristics as a special language.It possesses linguistic transformation and potential role of assistance for semantic choice.Hence,it requires translators to overcome the obstacles in translation by means of the full understanding of the context and rich background knowledge of Chinese and western culture.Besides,in the light of the readers’ capacity of acceptance,translators need to adopt various translated methods flexibly to make literary works truly understood and accepted by the target readers.